Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

“WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED”

 
Where three roads joined it was green and fair,
And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea,
And life laughed sweet when I halted there;
Yet there I never again would be.
 
 
I am sure those branchways are brooding now,
With a wistful blankness upon their face,
While the few mute passengers notice how
Spectre-beridden is the place;
 
 
Which nightly sighs like a laden soul,
And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell
Not far from thence, should have let it roll
Away from them down a plumbless well
 
 
While the phasm of him who fared starts up,
And of her who was waiting him sobs from near,
As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup
They filled for themselves when their sky was clear.
 
 
Yes, I see those roads – now rutted and bare,
While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea;
And though life laughed when I halted there,
It is where I never again would be.
 

“AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM”
(ON THE SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, Nov. 11, 1918)

I

 
There had been years of Passion – scorching, cold,
And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,
Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold,
Among the young, among the weak and old,
And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”
 

II

 
Men had not paused to answer.  Foes distraught
Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness,
Philosophies that sages long had taught,
And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought,
And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness.
 

III

 
The feeble folk at home had grown full-used
To “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” from the war-adept
In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused;
To day – dreamt men in millions, when they mused —
To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.
 

IV

 
Waking to wish existence timeless, null,
Sirius they watched above where armies fell;
He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull
Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull
Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.
 

V

 
So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly
Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!”
One morrow.  Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,
“Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,
And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?”
 

VI

 
Breathless they paused.  Out there men raised their glance
To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,
As they had raised it through the four years’ dance
Of Death in the now familiar flats of France;
And murmured, “Strange, this!  How?  All firing stopped?”
 

VII

 
Aye; all was hushed.  The about-to-fire fired not,
The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.
One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot
And turned.  The Spirit of Irony smirked out, “What?
Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?”
 

VIII

 
Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,
No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn,
No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;
Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”;
No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.
 

IX

 
Calm fell.  From Heaven distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”
 

HAUNTING FINGERS
A PHANTASY IN A MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

 
         “Are you awake,
      Comrades, this silent night?
   Well ’twere if all of our glossy gluey make
Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!”
 
 
         “O viol, my friend,
      I watch, though Phosphor nears,
   And I fain would drowse away to its utter end
This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!”
 
 
And they felt past handlers clutch them,
   Though none was in the room,
Old players’ dead fingers touch them,
      Shrunk in the tomb.
 
 
         “’Cello, good mate,
      You speak my mind as yours:
   Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state,
Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?”
 
 
         “Once I could thrill
      The populace through and through,
   Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.”.
(A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.)
 
 
And they felt old muscles travel
   Over their tense contours,
And with long skill unravel
      Cunningest scores.
 
 
         “The tender pat
      Of her aery finger-tips
   Upon me daily – I rejoiced thereat!”
(Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)
 
 
         “My keys’ white shine,
      Now sallow, met a hand
   Even whiter…  Tones of hers fell forth with mine
In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!”
 
 
And its clavier was filmed with fingers
   Like tapering flames – wan, cold —
Or the nebulous light that lingers
      In charnel mould.
 
 
         “Gayer than most
      Was I,” reverbed a drum;
   “The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs!  What a host
I stirred – even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!”
 
 
         Trilled an aged viol:
      “Much tune have I set free
   To spur the dance, since my first timid trial
Where I had birth – far hence, in sun-swept Italy!”
 
 
And he feels apt touches on him
   From those that pressed him then;
Who seem with their glance to con him,
      Saying, “Not again!”
 
 
         “A holy calm,”
      Mourned a shawm’s voice subdued,
   “Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm
Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.”
 
 
         “I faced the sock
      Nightly,” twanged a sick lyre,
   “Over ranked lights!  O charm of life in mock,
O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!”
 
 
Thus they, till each past player
   Stroked thinner and more thin,
And the morning sky grew grayer
      And day crawled in.
 

THE WOMAN I MET

 
A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted
      A lamp-lit crowd;
And anon there passed me a soul departed,
      Who mutely bowed.
In my far-off youthful years I had met her,
Full-pulsed; but now, no more life’s debtor,
      Onward she slid
   In a shroud that furs half-hid.
 
 
“Why do you trouble me, dead woman,
      Trouble me;
You whom I knew when warm and human?
      – How it be
That you quitted earth and are yet upon it
Is, to any who ponder on it,
      Past being read!”
   “Still, it is so,” she said.
 
 
“These were my haunts in my olden sprightly
      Hours of breath;
Here I went tempting frail youth nightly
      To their death;
But you deemed me chaste – me, a tinselled sinner!
How thought you one with pureness in her
      Could pace this street
   Eyeing some man to greet?
 
 
“Well; your very simplicity made me love you
      Mid such town dross,
Till I set not Heaven itself above you,
      Who grew my Cross;
For you’d only nod, despite how I sighed for you;
So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!
      – What I suffered then
   Would have paid for the sins of ten!
 
 
“Thus went the days.  I feared you despised me
      To fling me a nod
Each time, no more: till love chastised me
      As with a rod
That a fresh bland boy of no assurance
Should fire me with passion beyond endurance,
      While others all
   I hated, and loathed their call.
 
 
“I said: ‘It is his mother’s spirit
      Hovering around
To shield him, maybe!’  I used to fear it,
      As still I found
My beauty left no least impression,
And remnants of pride withheld confession
      Of my true trade
   By speaking; so I delayed.
 
 
“I said: ‘Perhaps with a costly flower
      He’ll be beguiled.’
I held it, in passing you one late hour,
      To your face: you smiled,
Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there
A single one that rivalled me there!.
      Well: it’s all past.
   I died in the Lock at last.”
 
 
So walked the dead and I together
      The quick among,
Elbowing our kind of every feather
      Slowly and long;
Yea, long and slowly.  That a phantom should stalk there
With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there
      That winter night
   By flaming jets of light.
 
 
She showed me Juans who feared their call-time,
      Guessing their lot;
She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time,
      And that did not.
Till suddenly murmured she: “Now, tell me,
Why asked you never, ere death befell me,
      To have my love,
   Much as I dreamt thereof?”
 
 
I could not answer.  And she, well weeting
      All in my heart,
Said: “God your guardian kept our fleeting
      Forms apart!”
Sighing and drawing her furs around her
Over the shroud that tightly bound her,
      With wafts as from clay
   She turned and thinned away.
 

London, 1918.

“IF IT’S EVER SPRING AGAIN”
(SONG)

 
If it’s ever spring again,
   Spring again,
I shall go where went I when
Down the moor-cock splashed, and hen,
Seeing me not, amid their flounder,
Standing with my arm around her;
If it’s ever spring again,
   Spring again,
I shall go where went I then.
 
 
If it’s ever summer-time,
   Summer-time,
With the hay crop at the prime,
And the cuckoos – two – in rhyme,
As they used to be, or seemed to,
We shall do as long we’ve dreamed to,
If it’s ever summer-time,
   Summer-time,
With the hay, and bees achime.
 

THE TWO HOUSES

 
         In the heart of night,
      When farers were not near,
   The left house said to the house on the right,
“I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.”
 
 
         Said the right, cold-eyed:
      “Newcomer here I am,
   Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide,
Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.
 
 
         “Modern my wood,
      My hangings fair of hue;
   While my windows open as they should,
And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.
 
 
         “Your gear is gray,
      Your face wears furrows untold.”
   “ – Yours might,” mourned the other, “if you held, brother,
The Presences from aforetime that I hold.
 
 
         “You have not known
      Men’s lives, deaths, toils, and teens;
   You are but a heap of stick and stone:
A new house has no sense of the have-beens.
 
 
         “Void as a drum
      You stand: I am packed with these,
   Though, strangely, living dwellers who come
See not the phantoms all my substance sees!
 
 
         “Visible in the morning
      Stand they, when dawn drags in;
   Visible at night; yet hint or warning
Of these thin elbowers few of the inmates win.
 
 
         “Babes new-brought-forth
      Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched
   Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth;
Yea, throng they as when first from the ’Byss upfetched.
 
 
         “Dancers and singers
      Throb in me now as once;
   Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingers
Of heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce.
 
 
         “Note here within
      The bridegroom and the bride,
   Who smile and greet their friends and kin,
And down my stairs depart for tracks untried.
 
 
         “Where such inbe,
      A dwelling’s character
   Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy
To them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere.
 
 
         “Yet the blind folk
      My tenants, who come and go
   In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke,
Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.”
 
 
         “ – Will the day come,”
      Said the new one, awestruck, faint,
   “When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb —
And with such spectral guests become acquaint?”
 
 
         “ – That will it, boy;
      Such shades will people thee,
   Each in his misery, irk, or joy,
And print on thee their presences as on me.”
 

ON STINSFORD HILL AT MIDNIGHT

 
I glimpsed a woman’s muslined form
   Sing-songing airily
Against the moon; and still she sang,
   And took no heed of me.
 
 
Another trice, and I beheld
   What first I had not scanned,
That now and then she tapped and shook
   A timbrel in her hand.
 
 
So late the hour, so white her drape,
   So strange the look it lent
To that blank hill, I could not guess
   What phantastry it meant.
 
 
Then burst I forth: “Why such from you?
   Are you so happy now?”
Her voice swam on; nor did she show
   Thought of me anyhow.
 
 
I called again: “Come nearer; much
   That kind of note I need!”
The song kept softening, loudening on,
   In placid calm unheed.
 
 
“What home is yours now?” then I said;
   “You seem to have no care.”
But the wild wavering tune went forth
   As if I had not been there.
 
 
“This world is dark, and where you are,”
   I said, “I cannot be!”
But still the happy one sang on,
   And had no heed of me.
 

THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE

 
One without looks in to-night
   Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
   As we sit and think
   By the fender-brink.
 
 
We do not discern those eyes
   Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
   Wondering, aglow,
   Fourfooted, tiptoe.
 

THE SELFSAME SONG

 
A bird bills the selfsame song,
With never a fault in its flow,
That we listened to here those long
   Long years ago.
 
 
A pleasing marvel is how
A strain of such rapturous rote
Should have gone on thus till now
   Unchanged in a note!
 
 
– But it’s not the selfsame bird. —
No: perished to dust is he.
As also are those who heard
   That song with me.
 

THE WANDERER

 
There is nobody on the road
   But I,
And no beseeming abode
   I can try
For shelter, so abroad
   I must lie.
 
 
The stars feel not far up,
   And to be
The lights by which I sup
   Glimmeringly,
Set out in a hollow cup
   Over me.
 
 
They wag as though they were
   Panting for joy
Where they shine, above all care,
   And annoy,
And demons of despair —
   Life’s alloy.
 
 
Sometimes outside the fence
   Feet swing past,
Clock-like, and then go hence,
   Till at last
There is a silence, dense,
   Deep, and vast.
 
 
A wanderer, witch-drawn
   To and fro,
To-morrow, at the dawn,
   On I go,
And where I rest anon
   Do not know!
 
 
Yet it’s meet – this bed of hay
   And roofless plight;
For there’s a house of clay,
   My own, quite,
To roof me soon, all day
   And all night.
 

A WIFE COMES BACK

 
This is the story a man told me
Of his life’s one day of dreamery.
 
 
   A woman came into his room
Between the dawn and the creeping day:
She was the years-wed wife from whom
He had parted, and who lived far away,
      As if strangers they.
 
 
   He wondered, and as she stood
She put on youth in her look and air,
And more was he wonderstruck as he viewed
Her form and flesh bloom yet more fair
      While he watched her there;
 
 
   Till she freshed to the pink and brown
That were hers on the night when first they met,
When she was the charm of the idle town
And he the pick of the club-fire set.
      His eyes grew wet,
 
 
   And he stretched his arms: “Stay – rest! – ”
He cried.  “Abide with me so, my own!”
But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast;
She had vanished with all he had looked upon
      Of her beauty: gone.
 
 
   He clothed, and drew downstairs,
But she was not in the house, he found;
And he passed out under the leafy pairs
Of the avenue elms, and searched around
      To the park-pale bound.
 
 
   He mounted, and rode till night
To the city to which she had long withdrawn,
The vision he bore all day in his sight
Being her young self as pondered on
      In the dim of dawn.
 
 
   “ – The lady here long ago —
Is she now here? – young – or such age as she is?”
“ – She is still here.” – “Thank God.  Let her know;
She’ll pardon a comer so late as this
   Whom she’d fain not miss.”
 
 
   She received him – an ancient dame,
Who hemmed, with features frozen and numb,
“How strange! – I’d almost forgotten your name! —
A call just now – is troublesome;
      Why did you come?”
 

A YOUNG MAN’S EXHORTATION

 
   Call off your eyes from care
By some determined deftness; put forth joys
Dear as excess without the core that cloys,
   And charm Life’s lourings fair.
 
 
   Exalt and crown the hour
That girdles us, and fill it full with glee,
Blind glee, excelling aught could ever be
   Were heedfulness in power.
 
 
   Send up such touching strains
That limitless recruits from Fancy’s pack
Shall rush upon your tongue, and tender back
   All that your soul contains.
 
 
   For what do we know best?
That a fresh love-leaf crumpled soon will dry,
And that men moment after moment die,
   Of all scope dispossest.
 
 
   If I have seen one thing
It is the passing preciousness of dreams;
That aspects are within us; and who seems
   Most kingly is the King.
 

1867: Westbourne Park Villas.

AT LULWORTH COVE A CENTURY BACK

 
Had I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there:
 
 
“You see that man?” – I might have looked, and said,
“O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought
Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban’s Head.
So commonplace a youth calls not my thought.”
 
 
“You see that man?” – “Why yes; I told you; yes:
Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;
And as the evening light scants less and less
He looks up at a star, as many do.”
 
 
“You see that man?” – “Nay, leave me!” then I plead,
“I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,
And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:
I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!
 
 
“Good. That man goes to Rome – to death, despair;
And no one notes him now but you and I:
A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,
And bend with reverence where his ashes lie.”
 

September 1920.

Note. – In September 1820 Keats, on his way to Rome, landed one day on the Dorset coast, and composed the sonnet, “Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.” The spot of his landing is judged to have been Lulworth Cove.

A BYGONE OCCASION
(SONG)

 
   That night, that night,
   That song, that song!
Will such again be evened quite
   Through lifetimes long?
 
 
   No mirth was shown
   To outer seers,
But mood to match has not been known
   In modern years.
 
 
   O eyes that smiled,
   O lips that lured;
That such would last was one beguiled
   To think ensured!
 
 
   That night, that night,
   That song, that song;
O drink to its recalled delight,
   Though tears may throng!
 

TWO SERENADES

I

On Christmas Eve

 
Late on Christmas Eve, in the street alone,
Outside a house, on the pavement-stone,
I sang to her, as we’d sung together
On former eves ere I felt her tether. —
Above the door of green by me
Was she, her casement seen by me;
   But she would not heed
   What I melodied
   In my soul’s sore need —
   She would not heed.
 
 
Cassiopeia overhead,
And the Seven of the Wain, heard what I said
As I bent me there, and voiced, and fingered
Upon the strings… Long, long I lingered:
Only the curtains hid from her
One whom caprice had bid from her;
   But she did not come,
   And my heart grew numb
   And dull my strum;
   She did not come.
 

II

A Year Later

 
I skimmed the strings; I sang quite low;
I hoped she would not come or know
That the house next door was the one now dittied,
Not hers, as when I had played unpitied;
– Next door, where dwelt a heart fresh stirred,
My new Love, of good will to me,
Unlike my old Love chill to me,
Who had not cared for my notes when heard:
   Yet that old Love came
   To the other’s name
   As hers were the claim;
   Yea, the old Love came
 
 
My viol sank mute, my tongue stood still,
I tried to sing on, but vain my will:
I prayed she would guess of the later, and leave me;
She stayed, as though, were she slain by the smart,
She would bear love’s burn for a newer heart.
The tense-drawn moment wrought to bereave me
Of voice, and I turned in a dumb despair
At her finding I’d come to another there.
   Sick I withdrew
   At love’s grim hue
   Ere my last Love knew;
   Sick I withdrew.
 

From an old copy.

THE WEDDING MORNING

 
   Tabitha dressed for her wedding: —
   “Tabby, why look so sad?”
“ – O I feel a great gloominess spreading, spreading,
   Instead of supremely glad!.
 
 
   “I called on Carry last night,
   And he came whilst I was there,
Not knowing I’d called.  So I kept out of sight,
   And I heard what he said to her:
 
 
   “‘ – Ah, I’d far liefer marry
   You, Dear, to-morrow!’ he said,
‘But that cannot be.’ – O I’d give him to Carry,
And willingly see them wed,
 
 
   “But how can I do it when
   His baby will soon be born?
After that I hope I may die.  And then
   She can have him.  I shall not mourn!”
 

END OF THE YEAR 1912

 
You were here at his young beginning,
   You are not here at his agèd end;
Off he coaxed you from Life’s mad spinning,
   Lest you should see his form extend
      Shivering, sighing,
      Slowly dying,
   And a tear on him expend.
 
 
So it comes that we stand lonely
   In the star-lit avenue,
Dropping broken lipwords only,
   For we hear no songs from you,
      Such as flew here
      For the new year
   Once, while six bells swung thereto.
 

THE CHIMES PLAY “LIFE’S A BUMPER!”

 
“Awake!  I’m off to cities far away,”
I said; and rose, on peradventures bent.
The chimes played “Life’s a Bumper!” on that day
To the measure of my walking as I went:
Their sweetness frisked and floated on the lea,
As they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.
 
 
“Awake!” I said.  “I go to take a bride!”
– The sun arose behind me ruby-red
As I journeyed townwards from the countryside,
The chiming bells saluting near ahead.
Their sweetness swelled in tripping tings of glee
As they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.
 
 
“Again arise.”  I seek a turfy slope,
And go forth slowly on an autumn noon,
And there I lay her who has been my hope,
And think, “O may I follow hither soon!”
While on the wind the chimes come cheerily,
Playing out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.
 

1913.